English: A Broken Language?

[Sovaal]

And the folks who misuse there, their and they're as well as too and to as native speakers are speaking English. Just badly.

That is, they use broken English. English most definitely isn't my favourite language, but watching it being turned into gibberish just fills me with an unbearable sadness.

Ah, but such is the nature of language.

[Arvanon and Vortes]

I'd agree that English is not broken, however I would also assert that there are some much nicer, more interesting and, generally, cooler languages out there.

[Pasong Tirad]

I'd agree that English is not broken, however I would also assert that there are some much nicer, more interesting and, generally, cooler languages out there.

Like languages that don't have a huge emphasis on being specific about the gender all the damn time.

I'm looking at you, English, but more specifically you two, Spanish and German.

[Arvanon and Vortes]

I'd agree that English is not broken, however I would also assert that there are some much nicer, more interesting and, generally, cooler languages out there.

Like languages that don't have a huge emphasis on being specific about the gender all the damn time.

I'm looking at you, English, but more specifically you two, Spanish and German.

So true. Farsi is great like that.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Broken? No. A mutt? Yes. Maybe some people say it's broken because of how many influences it has. Maybe that makes it sound broken to them.

Well this, absolutely. Its roots are in Latin, French, Dutch, various Germanic strains, plus borrowed words from everywhere like borscht, samurai, sushi...

English followed other languages into dark alleys, knocked them on the head, and rooted through their pockets for loose vocabulary and grammar.

One could even accuse English of being a whore. But not broken.

[Sanctissima]

I would, actually. He's kind of a dick in person and his bars are wack, but he is a good singer. Not the point, though. Shakespeare's popularity had a lot to do with the universality of his plays. His plays will be staged until theater no longer exists (which should be any time now - at least, they've said it would be any time now since the day theater was invented, but eh).

Heresy!

Yes, but he also gives Brutus a sympathetic and honourable death, and paints him as being a sympathetic character who genuinely believed in the sic semper tyrannus schtick. Also, considering how Antony is portrayed in the later play of his and Cleopatra's namesakes, I'm not convinced he was trying to portray him in a particularly endearing light in the funeral oration instance.

Writers aren't supposed to judge their characters, especially writers of drama whose characters actually have to be performed by actual people, so there's that. How they were written vs. their historical counterparts is hardly the point, wouldn't you agree? They were written very well, and that is what matters.

Generally, they are. Makes for better and more compelling storytelling. Besides, Shakespeare judged his characters all the time. Plenty of heroes and villains in his plays. Hell, in King Lear he outright uses the Fool to tell the king he's a stupid asshole who caused his own demise.

Regardless, my main gripe with Shakespeare is that I consider him an overrated Elizabethan writer who gets treated as though he was a literary genius when in reality he was a cheap discount playwright whose only real contribution to English literature was giving High School English teachers something to get their students to groan about. Not even high-quality meme value. I've seen better.

[Petrasylvania]

[Sovaal]

Well this, absolutely. Its roots are in Latin, French, Dutch, various Germanic strains, plus borrowed words from everywhere like borscht, samurai, sushi...

English followed other languages into dark alleys, knocked them on the head, and rooted through their pockets for loose vocabulary and grammar.

One could even accuse English of being a whore. But not broken.

Whore doesn't even begin to cover it.

[The Blaatschapen]

Well this, absolutely. Its roots are in Latin, French, Dutch, various Germanic strains, plus borrowed words from everywhere like borscht, samurai, sushi...

English followed other languages into dark alleys, knocked them on the head, and rooted through their pockets for loose vocabulary and grammar.

One could even accuse English of being a whore. But not broken.

We never paid her. Not a whore.

[The Two Jerseys]

I get the feeling that the people who say that English is broken are the ones who are trying to rationalize why they failed their English class...

Regardless, my main gripe with Shakespeare is that I consider him an overrated Elizabethan writer who gets treated as though he was a literary genius when in reality he was a cheap discount playwright whose only real contribution to English literature was giving High School English teachers something to get their students to groan about. Not even high-quality meme value. I've seen better.

Marlowe was better anyway.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

One could even accuse English of being a whore. But not broken.

We never paid her. Not a whore.

Don't lluevas en ma parade, kinde!!

[The Blaatschapen]

We never paid her. Not a whore.

Don't lluevas en ma parade, kinde!!

Dos cervezas por favor.

[Arvanon and Vortes]

I get the feeling that the people who say that English is broken are the ones who are trying to rationalize why they failed their English class...

Can confirm, this is often the case.

[Sovaal]

One could even accuse English of being a whore. But not broken.

We never paid her. Not a whore.

So uh, starts with sl and rhymes with hut?

[Arvanon and Vortes]

We never paid her. Not a whore.

So uh, starts with sl and rhymes with hut?

Slav hut? Well what's that?

[Sovaal]

So uh, starts with sl and rhymes with hut?

Slav hut? Well what's that?

A hut where the local Slavic woman brings all the men in the village during the wee hours of the night.

[The Blaatschapen]

We never paid her. Not a whore.

So uh, starts with sl and rhymes with hut?

No, just very promiscuous.

No need to shame the behaviour.

[Ethel mermania]

English is not a broken language because there are millions of people across the world -- 1,500 million, with only 375 million being native speakers -- who manage to learn the rules and use it effectively.

One million and a half manage to use English to some effect, maybe.
One million and a half manage to learn its rules, HA! Ha. No. There's plenty of native Anglophones who butcher systematically what is supposed to be their own - and quite often, their only - language. The same happens with every other language on the planet, but with English it's often worse, given its horrible writing system (alphabetic but quite non-phonemic), the frequency of misused loanwords and idioms, and the abundance of dialects combined with the lack of a central language academy.

Academy? What academy? We don need no stinkin academy.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

We never paid her. Not a whore.

So uh, starts with sl and rhymes with hut?

Surr, we'll go with that.

[The Blaatschapen]

One million and a half manage to use English to some effect, maybe.
One million and a half manage to learn its rules, HA! Ha. No. There's plenty of native Anglophones who butcher systematically what is supposed to be their own - and quite often, their only - language. The same happens with every other language on the planet, but with English it's often worse, given its horrible writing system (alphabetic but quite non-phonemic), the frequency of misused loanwords and idioms, and the abundance of dialects combined with the lack of a central language academy.

Academy? What academy? We don need no stinkin academy.

And it shows.

[Community Values]

Anyone saying English is a broken language is anti-anglo and needs to be sent back to the barbarous parts of the world, like France.

[Sovaal]

One million and a half manage to use English to some effect, maybe.
One million and a half manage to learn its rules, HA! Ha. No. There's plenty of native Anglophones who butcher systematically what is supposed to be their own - and quite often, their only - language. The same happens with every other language on the planet, but with English it's often worse, given its horrible writing system (alphabetic but quite non-phonemic), the frequency of misused loanwords and idioms, and the abundance of dialects combined with the lack of a central language academy.

Academy? What academy? We don need no stinkin academy.

But how will we become wizards, Harry kid with shaggy hair?

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

I wonder. If some people claim English is broken, then perhaps we need to remind them that so is every other language, with very few exceptions.

[Arvanon and Vortes]

One million and a half manage to use English to some effect, maybe.
One million and a half manage to learn its rules, HA! Ha. No. There's plenty of native Anglophones who butcher systematically what is supposed to be their own - and quite often, their only - language. The same happens with every other language on the planet, but with English it's often worse, given its horrible writing system (alphabetic but quite non-phonemic), the frequency of misused loanwords and idioms, and the abundance of dialects combined with the lack of a central language academy.

Academy? What academy? We don need no stinkin academy.

[Nanatsu no Tsuki]

Language is dynamic. I am a tad of a purist in that I think that if you're going to learn a new language, you should first learn it properly and then add the slang, short cuts and influences from other languages last. We live in a very ''global'' world in that we are in contact with people from all over through the power of the internet. Our languages are influenced by other languages constantly. The very development, dynamism and survival of languages depend on this ability to adapt. And this adaptation process includes acquisition of terms from other languages, terms that sometimes, supplant that original terms in that language they're influencing.

We can't really be purists when it comes to languages because, like I said before, every language there is, with very few exceptions, has been influenced by another language/or languages. If English is broken, then so is Spanish, French, German, Japanese, Hindi, Korean and so forth and so on.